Max Headroom

Max Headroom

Max Headroom is a television series that was so horrible that it was yanked from the airwaves after only two seasons, never to be heard of again (until now). Each episode went on and on, seemingly endlessly, for 57 minutes. Advertisers avoided the show like the plague. Only the U. S. Army had the balls (or the stupidity) to sponsor the show, although more timid advertisers allowed their products to be shown in the series itself as so-called product placements.

George Stoned, Rocky Moron, and Annabel Jackass are to blame for the original idea for the series.

The Main Character

The talking head, named Max Headroom in the T.V. series, was originally based on the ancient Canadian Titan 'Hesaudrfeetoadfgnomemhelicopterdfax'. According to ancient mythology, Hesaudrfeetoadfgnomemhelicopterdfax was the Titan of torsos. This becomes apparent whenever Max is present, as only his torso is visible. The stu-stu-stu-stu-stu-stu-tering idea came from Hesaudrfeetoadfgnomemhelicopterdfax's greatest adventure: Ancient mythology tells us of when Hesaudrfeetoadfgnomemhelicopterdfax couldn't remember what to say to his brother, your mum, so he instead repeated the same two words twice. These legendary words are none other than "**** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off! **** off!" These were the immortal worlds which many viewers of the TV series utter to the screen, thereby worshipping the Titan.

Premise

Supposedly, the show was set in the not-so-far-off future, in which, according to network TV producers' hubris, TV networks and their advertisers (in the case of Max Headroom, the U. S. Army) ruled the downtrodden underclass, the males of which liked mostly to sit on their couches in their underpants, without shirts, and swill beer while watching Max Headroom.

Thanks to blipverts, compressed commercials, the U. S. Army could cause the laziest and most offensive couch potatoes to explode.

While muckraker Edison Carter watches a secret tape (this is 1985, and DVDs haven't been invented yet, folks) about the blipverts, two thugs arrive to sodomize him, and he flees on his product-placement Motorola motorike, his skull colliding with a descending exit barrier labeled "Max Headroom 2.3 meters."

The plot sickens, but to bring it to a merciful end, what matters (actually, nothing in this stupid series matters), Max's memories are scanned into a product-placement Memorex computer disc ("Is it live or is it Memorex?"), and Carter, as Max Headroom, returns to the airwaves as a computer-generated talking-head host and DJ for a British Channel 4 music program. Brilliant.

Competing networks

According to the show, such other TV networks as TKO TV ("The Fight Channel"), Pornovision, and Orgasm compete with Headroom's Channel 4. Despite their fictitious nature, all of them had higher ratings than Max Headroom.

Sample plots

The plots were all pointless and pathetic, and included these story lines:

• Rapists - Theora's brother becomes the victim of rapists in an episode of Pornovision's Sons of Sodomy.

• Body Banks - Max's girlfriend is kidnapped so her vagina can be used in a transplant operation. Meanwhile, Max demands details about his "fuzzy parts."

• Dream Thieves - The networks run out of creative material for new programming, so they broadcast a Max Headroom of endlessly looping episodes.

"Brilliant" dialogue

Here's a sample of the dialogue that fans thought "brilliant" and "hilarious":

MAX: "Now, I understand why people prefer watching television to the radio. They've worked out how boring it is watching the radio."

The writers made Max's image flicker on viewers' TV sets and, as the image flickered, Max stuttered. Here's an example:

MAX: "Yes! Yes! You with that plank on whee-whee-whee-whee-wheels. What is its effect-t-t-t on you?"

Fans saw these "special effects" as "brilliant," and "hilarious."

Fortunately, no one else thought so, which hastened the cancellation of the show.

One of Max Headroom's many enemies' more memorable lines was "Gimme Head," a request for henchmen to kidnap the title character. This line soon became a euphemism for fellatio, Max's favorite off-screen activity, according to his biography, and the frequent use of this line prevented the show's much-earlier cancellation.

American version

Max Headroom aired in the United States as Max's Bedroom, which was about a bachelor and the many women (a new girl every week) he bedded in his lavish penthouse boudoir. Despite many predictable puns, a great deal of nudity, and suggestive sexual scenes, Max's Bedroom was yanked from the airwaves after only two seasons, never to be heard of again (until now).

Other appearances

In 1987, Max interrupted 2 TV stations in Chicago with random shenanigans. The first incident was during a recap of a Chicago Bears game on WGN, and the second was during an episode of Doctor Who on WTTW. Many people speculated about the supposed "secret identity" of the broadcast hijacker, but the real truth is that it was Max himself who did both incidents